New Delhi

Restaurants in New Delhi

New Delhi restaurants often serve Mughlai or Punjabi cuisine. Stuffed flatbread (paranthas), kababs, varied versions of fried dough (chaat), and spicy pockets with stuffing (kachauri) are all very popular. Restaurants in New Delhi vary from the expensive to the pocket-friendly local chains and street food. Use your discretion for street cart offerings; go for established chains if possible. Staple foods of Indian cuisine in general include rice, millet, beans and lentils, due to the region’s predominantly vegetarian culture. Chicken and mutton are the most common meat dishes; fish and beef are not widely consumed. Indian cuisine is most well known for its spices and flavorings like chilli pepper powder, black mustard seed, cardamom, cumin, ginger, coriander and garlic. Each culinary region has a distinctive blend of spices.

Some of the best restaurants in New Delhi include Dakshin, a hotel restaurant inside the Sheraton, which serves great South Indian cuisine. Oh! Calcutta is a national chain that focuses on seafood and seasonings. Khan Chacha has famous char-grilled kathi rolls—roti bread filled with minced mutton, cheese or spiced chicken tikka. They are cheap and perfect for a snack while shopping. See below for more New Delhi restaurant ideas.

While a hokey upstairs cocktail lounge and nightly DJ sets draw crowds to this suburban stalwart, it’s the cuisine that really sings—specifically the raan-e-Punjab, a seasoned whole leg of lamb slow-roasted in the tandoor.

Entirely worth the 30- to 40-minute drive down from Connaught Place and central Delhi, this hotel restaurant has improbably become a haunt of in-the-know locals, who make up 90 percent of the lunch and dinner crowd.

Purportedly India’s highest-grossing restaurant and certainly one of the smartest, this upstart at the Oberoi has beguiling interiors (striking fuchsia walls, intricate sandalwood sculptures on the ceiling) and warm lighting that together make the vast, bustling space seem almost intimate.

Part of a national chain (but don’t let that dissuade you), this upmarket newcomer specializes in Bengali cooking—arguably the greatest regional Indian cuisine that’s relatively unknown outside of India.

Since 1968, Banda Hasan has been dishing up his famous char-grilled kathi rolls—thin roti roomali bread filled with minced mutton, paneer (cheese), or spiced chicken tikka—first from a cart in Greater Kailash, then from this tiny takeout stand in the heart of busy Khan

Set in the yuppified (for Delhi) Defence Colony shopping plaza, this delectable seafood place—it’s part of a chain, but a good one—presents a welcome dilemma: its encyclopedic menu is crammed with about 1,473 dishes and nearly as many varieties of fresh fish.